Lucas Glover has been fighting battles on and off the course—one against the yips that nearly ended his career and another against the PGA Tour’s 2026 policy changes. While he’s been vocal about his disapproval of the Tour’s new structure, his personal comeback story is just as compelling, thanks to an unexpected source of wisdom: a former Navy SEAL, Jason Kuhn, who he met in 2016. Jason warned him, right from the start. “I know what you’re going through, I did it in baseball and I can fix you,” Kuhn, a former college pitcher-turned-Navy-SEAL, told Glover “but it’s going to be different than anything you’ve ever heard. I’m going to take you to a different place.”

For over a decade, Glover struggled with the dreaded yips. Yes, it’s the worst nightmare for every golfer. The lowest point came in 2016 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am when he had a panic attack on the 15 green. A few weeks later it happened again at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. “It was full-on no control over my facilities,” Glover recalled. “I was convinced I could beat it and out-practice it. It was just the way I’m wired. Turns out that wasn’t the case.” What followed was mental and physical turmoil, a cycle of anxiety and self-doubt that threatened his career. So, in May, Glover’s longtime manager, Mac Barnhardt, convinced him to meet with Kuhn. Kuhn’s approach was radically different from traditional sports psychology.

Having partnered with him gave Glover a new outlook. “It’s more of a scientific understanding of what was happening. It’s more of a central nervous system issue than a brain thing. I’d never had it explained to me scientifically,” Glover said at the 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship. “What I took the most from it was he said, ‘Dude, you’re not mentally weak. Just the opposite, but being able to compete with this at that level tells me you’re as strong as anyone I’ve ever met.’” He, is still thankful and speaks highly of Jason.

Basically, instead of the usual advice to “stay calm and breathe,” Kuhn encouraged Glover to attack the problem head-on. “Jason being a SEAL, his was more of an attacking nature, more of a military approach, more of a, when this comes, we’re going to beat it in the ground instead of stepping away from it and not embracing it,” Glover again shared during the Stepping Into the Fire show. “Jason convinced me of was that I was not mentally weak.”

Kuhn didn’t sugarcoat things, he simply reframed the way Glover saw himself. “You’ve been fighting this for 10 years, and you’re still on the Tour. You’ve been fighting this every day, and you’ve still shown up to work. You’ve still done pretty good. Not as good as you could have, but you’ve still done pretty good. And that shows you how mentally strong you actually are.” And that’s exactly what Glover needed to hear.

Through Zoom sessions and a mindset shift, he slowly regained his confidence—and his game. And his performance last season showed it. Though he didn’t win a tournament in 2024, he earned two top 10s and ten top 25s. This year, he has stepped up even more, already securing three top 10s and four top 25s in just nine events. But while he has beaten the yips, he now faces another battle—one that pits him against the PGA Tour’s latest policies.

Lucas Glover has been fighting against the PGA Tour’s 2026 changes

Glover has never been one to hold back, and when it comes to the PGA Tour’s upcoming 2026 policy changes, he isn’t mincing words. The 2009 U.S. Open champion recently criticized the changes, arguing that an exclusive group makes the decisions with little input from the broader player base.

“These changes are made in cool-kid meetings,” Glover said. “They think we’re stupid.” The new policies will reduce field sizes and limit eligibility, leaving many players frustrated. Glover believes the focus should be on enforcing pace-of-play rules rather than cutting opportunities for professionals trying to make a living.

But that’s not all—Glover has also taken a strong stance against the increasingly popular AimPoint green-reading technique, which involves players using their feet to measure slope and break. He’s not a fan, calling it both disruptive and unnecessary. “It’s also kind of rude to be up near the hole, stomping around figuring out where the break is in your feet,” Glover said. “It needs to be banned. It takes forever.”

As the PGA Tour prepares for its biggest structural changes in years, Glover remains one of the few voices willing to push back. Whether his criticisms will lead to any adjustments remains to be seen.